Politics live blog - Tuesday 14 June 2011

Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happened

The Houses of Parliament. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

8.54am: Today, officially, we're finally getting the government's climbdown over the health bill. In fact, we've been hearing about it in regular instalments over the last few months ever since the Lib Dems voted for substantial changes to the bill in March - David Cameron does not just want to change the bill, he wants voters to know that he has changed the bill, and so this is one U-turn he's happy to bang on about - but this afternoon we will get the formal announcement aboutthe changes the government will be making to the health bill. I'll be reporting it here, but my colleagues Randeep Ramesh and Rowenna Davis will be taking the lead on this story and they will be covering it minute by minute on their NHS reforms live blog.

Otherwise, there's a reasonable amount on the agenda. Here's a full list.

9.30am: Inflation figures are announced.

10.30am: Theresa May, the home secretary, announces plans to close loopholes in the sex offenders' register.

11.30am: Tom Winsor, author of a government report on police pay and conditions, gives evidence to the home affairs committee about policing. Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation, follows at 12pm.

Afternoon: David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley attend a joint event where they will speak about how the government will change the health bill.

3.30pm: Andrew Lansley makes a statement in the Commons about the changes the government will make to the health bill.

Afternoon: The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT) announce the results of their ballots on strike action over pensions.

As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and an afternoon one at about 4pm.

• The consumer prices index (CPI) measure of inflation was unchanged at 4.5%.

• The headline rate of retail prices index (RPI) inflation was also unchanged at 5.2%.

• The underlying rate of RPI inflation was unchanged at 5.3% in May.

There is more information in the news release from the Office for National Statistics about the figures which is available here.

10.02am:Sarah Wollaston, the GP and Tory MP who was originally critical of the government's NHS plans, told BBC News this morning that she welcomed the changes being made by the government. According to PoliticsHome, she said that she thought that all GPs would move towards GP-led commissioning but that she was glad there was now "flexibility" in the timescale. She also said she was pleased that the provisions on competition were being watered down.

A change in emphasis – making it clear that competition does have a role in the NHS but it should only be where it's going to improve services for patients, that it does expand choice but it shouldn't be an end in itself – is very important to people.

The latest poll from ComRes suggests that, even if public opinion is moving towards the govenrment on this issue, it still has a long way to go. According to ComRes, 49% of voters thinks the health bill should be abandoned and that the government should start again from scratch. Only 19% disagree.

For anyone wondering why having a weekly bin collection is so important to people like Pickles, John Redwood has a good explanation on his blog.

Many busy people only get a bin collection from their Council. They don't have children at school, are not around when many of the leisure facilities are open and don't need social services. Of course we benefit from others using these services and should be pleased that people in need and pain can get help. However, it does make the Council Tax bill even more unpalatable if the one service you have to use is only available fortnightly.

11.28am: You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.

As for the rest of the papers, here are some stories and articles that are particularly interesting.

• Michael Savage and Sam Coates in the Times (paywall) say that according to their latest Populus poll the government has increased its lead over Labour on the issue of who would be best at running the economy.

Only 23 per cent of voters now say they trust the Labour leader and the Shadow Chancellor to run the economy better — a 10 per cent drop since the last time Populus asked the question in March. This contrasts with 41 per cent who say they trust David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne "to manage the economy in the best interests of Britain" — down 3 per cent since March. The Government trio have extended their lead over their rivals from 11 points in March to 18 points today ...

Embarrassingly for Labour, there is also a marked drop among Labour voters supporting Mr Miliband and Mr Balls. While 70 per cent backed the pair as the best team to oversee the economy in March, this has gone down to 62 per cent. One in eight Labour voters (13 per cent) trusts Mr Cameron, Mr Clegg and Mr Osborne on the economy more than the Labour team.

The June poll for The Times found that 40 per cent would vote Labour if there was an election tomorrow — up 1 point since last month. The Tories are on 39 per cent, up 2 points, and the Lib Dems on 9 per cent — down 2 points.

• Andrew Grice in the Independent says David Miliband is considering a return to the shadow cabinet.

David Miliband is considering a surprise comeback to frontline politics in an attempt to end speculation about a continuing rift with his brother Ed.

Friends of the former Foreign Secretary said yesterday that his joining the Shadow Cabinet was a "live issue" in his circle of political allies. "There is a debate going on. Some people are arguing that it would be better to be a team player than look as though he is sulking on the sidelines," said one source.

"Ed's not defining himself, he hasn't got a narrative on the economy and he's indecisive," is one verdict. Others are even more brutal. "When you want to be prime minister you have to behave like a would-be prime minister, not a junior aide," a former Cabinet minister says. "Ed's got to grow out of one persona into the other. He's not Iain Duncan Smith, but he's like William Hague in 1997 — he hasn't filled out enough as a political heavyweight. It's not just that he isn't yet big enough, he leaves a terrible doubt in people's minds about whether he can be big enough" ...

It's about emotion as well as reason. Mr Miliband needs what Andrew Cooper, the head of strategy at No 10, calls "10,000 volt initiatives" that provide such a shock to the system that they get through to voters who are too busy finding PE kits or going to the pub to think about politics. In Opposition, you have no power actually to change laws so you have to demonstrate your values in other ways. Although he should never use the phrase, the Labour leader needs to turn up the volume.

Mr Miliband hates the idea of hugging a husky or a hoody. He has promised never to engage in such "superficial repositioning". Certainly, he'd look terrible in a baseball cap and should probably avoid Notting Hill Carnival. But in a television age, voters need images and symbols through which to understand their political leaders. Privately, strategists have been discussing what image could best get across the direction in which the leader wants to take his party — "perhaps he should be photographed going foxhunting," one aide jokes.

Sylvester also says Miliband has already started working on his party conference speech.

• Jim Pickard in the Financial Times (subscription) says the waste review being announced today will propose that people should be banned from including wood in their household rubbish.

Defra, the environment department, will announce the consultation in an attempt to slow the deluge of material that ends up in landfill, instead being recycled or used as biofuel. The issue is pressing because landfill taxes are rising sharply under the European Union Landfill Directive.

11.47am: Angela Eagle, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, has put out this statement about the inflation figures. (See 9.30am.)

It's now time George Osborne took some responsibility for the fact that inflation is still running at more than double the government's target rate. While rising commodity prices across the world are partly to blame, prices have also been pushed up this year by George Osborne's hike in VAT – a consequence of his decision last year to cut the deficit too far and too fast.

People on low and middle incomes are being squeezed from every direction – not just by rising prices and the VAT rise, but also the government's cuts to tax credits, cuts to childcare support and the child benefit freeze. And, as the IFS' report says today, rising prices hit pensioners and the poorest hardest.

The VAT rise looks increasingly like an own goal as high inflation continues to threaten a rise in mortgage rates for homeowners. And the higher inflation, higher unemployment and slower growth which George Osborne's policies have delivered risk a vicious circle in our economy as the government is set to borrow £46 billion more than it planned.

The Bank of England has been put in an impossible position by George Osborne. It has been left to do all the work to support a recovery that's been choked off by the Tory-led Government's fiscal policy to cut deeper and faster than any other major economy in the world.

11.52am: David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley will be making their announcement about the way the government will change the health bill shortly. They are speaking at Guy's hospital in London. A written ministerial statement is being issued at Westmister at the same time.

11.56am: The Health Service Journal seems to have got hold of a copy of the government's statement about changes to the health bill. It has posted it in full on its website.

12.18pm: Say what you like about David Cameron (left), but he is certainly a smooth communicator. Ever since he announced "the pause", there has been a debate about whether the changes being introduced to the health bill are radical and fundamental, or marginal and cosmetic. The Lib Dems (and the public) want the changes to be radical. Many Tory backbenchers want them to be marginal. And so how did Cameron address this issue? Easy. He insisted that both interpretations were correct. This is what he said just now in his speech at Guy's.

Now there were those who said this was a humiliating U-turn, that we were back- tracking and ditching all our plans. And there were those who said the opposite, that actually we weren't going to change anything – that this was all a big PR stunt.

Today we show that both are wrong.

The fundamentals of our plans, more control to patients, more power to doctors and nurses, less bureaucracy in the NHS, they are as strong today as they've ever been.

But the shape of our plans, the detail of how we're going to make all this work, that really has changed – as a direct result of this consultation.

Photograph: Geoff Kirby/PA

12.36pm: In his speech at the Guy's event, Nick Clegg (left) said that the government's handling of the health bill showed the strengths of coalition government.

Pausing the legislation was an unusual step. But this is a Government that does things differently. That listens to people. That won't take risks with something as important as our NHS.

And it's a different kind of government too – a coalition. Where different voices are heard. Where we're not afraid to disagree, to have the debate, to bring together the best of our ideas. That's coalition; that's good government. It's how you take the right decisions. And it's how we're protecting our NHS.

12.46pm: In his Q&A at Guy's hospital, David Cameron said the government's willingness to admit that it did not get the health bill right first time was "a sign of strength". Interestingly, YouGov have been polling on this. Asking about government U-turns generally, YouGov asked whether being willing to change was a sign that government was weak and incompetent, or whether it showed that the government was willing to listen. Some 39% said it was a sign of weakness, while 41% said it was a positive move that showed ministers were willing to respond to public opinion.

• David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley have confirmed that the government is going to substantially rewrite its health bill. They put on a show of unity as they held a joint press conference at a London hospital where they published a detailed document explaining the changes that will be made to the bill. The GP commissioning consortia will be known as "clinical commissioning groups". Primary care trusts will be abolished by April 2013 and, if the new commissioning groups are not ready to take charge of commissioning at that point, the NHS commissioning board will commission on their behalf. The health bill will return to committee for line-by-line scrutiny by MPs. At the news conference, Cameron expressed full confidence in Lansley, the architect of the original bill that is now being re-written. "I think Andrew has handled the situation extremely well and I think in politics you have to be big enough to admit when you don't get it right and that's exactly what I've done," Cameron said. Cameron and Clegg insisted that the government's willingness to admit that it did not get it right first time was a sign of strength, and Clegg insisted that compromise was a particular coalition virtue. For further details of the government's announcement, and the Q&A, do read our NHS reforms live blog.

• The Office for National Statistics has said that inflation remained at 4.5% last month. This is more than double the government's 2% target. As Larry Elliott reports, cheaper travel costs in May compensated for dearer food.

• The Home Office has said that sex offenders will have to wait until 15 years after they have been released before they can apply to have their name removed from the sex offenders' register. As the Press Association reports, Theresa May, the home secretary, had to act after the the supreme court ruled it was a breach of offenders' human rights to be put on the register for life with no review. May said the government was "appalled" at the ruling and would "make the minimum possible changes to the law". Under today's proposals, sex offenders will only be able to ask to be removed from the register 15 years after being released from jail. The Home Office is also introducing other proposals designed to tighten the notification requirements for people on the sex offenders' register.

• General Sir David Richards, the chief of the defence staff, has insisted that Britain can maintain the operation in Libya for as long as necessary. He was forced to issue a clarification after the head of the Royal Navy yesterday suggested that it would be hard to extend the mission beyond the summer. (See 10.59am.)

1.35pm: My colleague Randeep Ramesh has produced a summary of the key changes to the health bill announced by David Cameron earlier. Here it is.

• We won't have GP consortia - instead there will be "clinical commissioning groups". These will have to exist within local authority boundaries.

• Commissioning groups will have to have two lay members and a nurse and a hospital doctor. One of the lay members will undertake either the role of Deputy Chair or Chair of the governing body.

• We will also change the Bill so that regulations can be used to make provisions for how commissioning groups can use any quality payment awarded to them. This can mean a lot of things but the idea is to meet the charge that private companies could be paid for taking over the commissioning of patient care.

• Not all GPs will have to be clinical commissioners by 2013. Now only become operative "when they are ready".

• The National Commissioning Board will have outposts - known as clusters - to make sure things happen on the ground.• "Any Qualified Provider" will be delayed - only starting until April 2012.• We will remove Monitor's powers to "promote" competition as if it were an end in itself.

• Foundation Trust status will not have to happen by 2014. The coalition say although there will not be an option to stay as an NHS trust, but there will no longer be a blanket deadline in the Bill for abolishing NHS trusts as legal entities.

• We will introduce a "duty of candour": a new contractual requirement on providers to be open and transparent in admitting mistakes.

• Government admits it has not devised an effective failure regime if hospitals go bust and also says it was wrong to try to designate services as being so important that commissioners could not get rid of them.

Photograph: James Curley / Rex Features

1.43pm:Diane Abbott (left), the shadow health minister, has issued this statement about David Cameron's health announcement.

This is a short-term political fix that is bound to unravel. We still have a NHS plan which no-one voted for, which some of the leading health experts in the country do not understand, and will still cost billions of pounds. It is incredible that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are trying to spin their NHS car-crash as some kind of triumph.

People up and down the country are still no clearer about how the NHS changes affect them. They need to know when their hip replacement will be done, where the antenatal class will be and who will run the diabetes clinic. Worse still, their GP and hospital consultants will also be unclear about whether they stop or start any changes.

But when people are asked to say whether they would prefer a Conservative government led by David Cameron after the election, or a Labour government led by Ed Miliband, the figures are reversed.

Conservative government led by Cameron: 42%Labour government led by Miliband: 37%

2.43pm: The National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) have both voted to strike over plans to cut public sector pensions. The walkout is planned for 30 June.

According to the Press Association, the NUT's ballot showed that 92% of those voting were in favour of strike action. Turnout was 40% among state school members of the union and 27% among private school members. Some 83% of ATL members voted to strike, and overall turnout for the ballot was 35%.

2.56pm: The BMA has said that the health bill will be "very different" as a result of the changes announced by the government today. Dr Hamish Meldrum, the BMA chairman, has put out this statement.

We are pleased that the government has accepted the Future Forum's core recommendations, and that there will be significant revisions to the Health and Social Care Bill. We will need to look carefully at the details of the changes, but it seems clear that what we are likely to see is a very different Bill, and one which puts the reforms on a better track. There is much in the government's response that addresses the BMA's concerns, and many of the principles outlined reflect changes we have called for. The success of the reforms will very much depend on how the various elements link together and work on a practical level, and on how much they engage clinicians and patients locally.

We welcome the shift in the role of Monitor away from promoting competition. However, while we have always supported the principle of greater choice for patients, it has to be workable. There will need to be robust safeguards to ensure that vital services are not destabilised by unnecessary competition.

More detail is needed about the way clinical commissioning groups will operate in practice. While greater accountability and transparency around their decision-making processes are welcome, they should not be encumbered by bureaucracy.

It is reassuring that the government recognises there are still a number of issues to work through. It is particularly important that dialogue continues on education and training and the development of incentives for commissioners. We look forward to continuing our discussions with the government to help ensure that NHS reform is best for patients and workable for staff. Hanging over all this, however, is the fact that the NHS is facing unprecedented financial pressures. The focus on structural reform must not distract us from the task of minimising the impact of funding cuts on care.

3.03pm:Tom Winsor, the author of a government-commissioned review into police pay and conditions, told the home affairs committee this morning that policing may no longer be seen as a job for life in the future. Army-style short-term commissions for police officers were being considered, he said.

So police officers would not be signing up for a guaranteed job for 30 or 35 years. They would instead be signing up for an initial term of five years ... I know of no other occupation where you are guaranteed a job for 30 years.

Photograph: Jane Barlow /Camera Press

3.09pm:Ed Miliband (left) has renewed his call for the government to shelve the health bill. According to PoliticsHome, this is what he told BBC News.

We do need change in the National Health Service and we need changes to this Bill but the best thing the Government could do is going back to the drawing board ... David Cameron said before the general election, he made a solemn promise. He said no more top-down reorganisations. That's exactly what he rushed into, that's exactly why he's going ahead with it and we all know the consequences. Billions of pound that should be spent on patients instead being spent on making people redundant in the health service, some of whom may be re-hired. All the time it's patients who are losing out in higher waiting times and a worse health service.

• Nicholas Timmins on the FT's Westminster blog says that by 2013 the NHS commissioning board - "Britain's biggest unelected quango" - will be in charge of up to £60bn of NHS spending.

The commissioning board will anyway control some £25bn to £30bn of NHS spending on more specialised services. And if only, say, half the commissioning groups are ready by 2013, at that point [Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive] will be controlling around £60bn of the budget - his own £30bn plus half the £60bn that was to be transferred to the renamed and redesigned GP consortiums from 2013.

So in 2013, Britain's biggest unelected quango – the commissioning board – will be running perhaps £50bn to £60bn of NHS spending. Of course, over time as the commissioning groups mature, that should change. But it is unlikely to be precisely what the prime minister had in mind when he said today that under the coalition's plans "the bureaucrats will work for the doctors, rather than the doctor working for the bureaucrats".

• Michael Meacher on his blog says David Cameron has emerged as a "diminished figure" as a result of the health bill controversy.

Whilst he's at his best in using his PR talents to spatchcock together the irreconcilables, he's also added to his reputation as a rather shallow leader with little interest in detail and certainly no commanding ideology, who prefers to let others get on with it and then hang them out to dry if it goes belly-up. He was of course, as Prime Minister, copied in on the NHS bill at every stage of its development and will have given his consent at each stage, only getting involved when it looked as though his own retention of power at the next election risked being wrecked by Lansley's extremist market outlook.

• Denis MacShane at the Staggers says the 1970s provide a better comparision than the 1990s to where we are today.

Heath's reforms, similar to Cameron's NHS policy, came to naught when tested against reality and widespread social opposition. What arrived as a confident, cocky Conservative government in June 1970 had become by late 1972 a confused cacophony of unhappy Tory MPs. Labour simply picked up the pieces in 1974. Then Margaret Thatcher arrived. Like Ed Miliband, she was widely derided for her voice, her cautious style at the Despatch Box, her lack of ideological certainty and her refusal to dump on the 70-74 Tory government. The Iron Lady and ideological Maggie we all remember is a product of power and was not evident in opposition. All she had to do was hold her party together and wait for Labour to collapse.

Photograph: Nils Jorgensen / Rex Features

3.46pm: Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, is answering an urgent question in the Commons now on the government's waste review. Jamie Reed, the shadow environment minister, claimed that Spelman's department had become "the political equivalent of the mad woman in the attic", which seemed a bit close to the bone. (Imagine if David Cameron had said that about Harriet Harman's office.) Labour MPs are accusing the government of a U-turn, because councils won't be forced to re-instate weekly bin collections. But Eric Pickles (left) doesn't seem too bothered. He is sitting on the front bench alongside Spelman and he was written an article for PoliticsHome welcoming today's announcement. Here's an extract.

For the first time, in a major change of government policy, Whitehall will start supporting – rather than opposing – frequent rubbish collections. We will be working with local councils to increase the frequency and quality of rubbish collections and make it easier to recycle. The Government understands that the public have a reasonable expectation that household waste collections services should be weekly, particularly for smelly waste which results in vermin, flies and odours.

It shouldn't be the job of Secretaries of State to micromanage local services. But we will tackle the perverse measures which encourage councils specifically to cut the scope of collections. We have already revoked the Audit Commission guidance which marked down councils, and removed the bizarre system of 'Performance Reward Grants' which rewarded councils for downgrading waste collection services.

4.04pm: Here's an afternoon summary.• Ed Miliband has renewed his call for the health bill to be dropped. Dismissing the significance of the changes to the bill announced by the government, Miliband said: "David Cameron made a solemn promise before the general election: no more top-down reorganisations. Yet that is exactly what he rushed in to with an ideological plan which he confirmed today is going ahead. The consequences will be billions of pounds that should be being spent on patients instead being spent on making people redundant in the health service." But organisations representing health professionals have welcomed what the government is doing. Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association, said: "We are pleased that the government has accepted the Future Forum's core recommendations, and that there will be significant revisions to the health and social care bill. We will need to look carefully at the details of the changes, but it seems clear that what we are likely to see is a very different bill, and one which puts the reforms on a better track." And Sir Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), said: "We welcome the government's commitment that hospital doctors will be on the boards of local commissioning groups, as the RCP previously urged. We believe this will benefit patient care by bringing together clinical colleagues in commissioning decisions." Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, is now speaking about the changes in the Commons. My colleagues at the NHS reforms live blog are covering it in detail. (See 2.56pm and 3.09pm.)

• Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, has said that it would be a "big mistake" for public sector unions to go on strike while talks are still going on about changes to public sector pensions. He spoke out after it was announced that the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) have both voted to go on strike later this month over the proposed cuts to public sector pensions. "We have made a great deal of progress in the talks and I am hopeful that more progress will be achieved," Maude said. "It will be a big mistake for people to embark on strike action while there are discussions going on." (See 2.43pm.)

• Two mobile phone companies have told MPs that they did not tell more than 80 customers that their phones may have been hacked. As the BBC reports, "Vodafone and Orange/T-Mobile told MPs the police had not asked them to do so and they were worried about prejudicing the inquiry conducted at the time."